Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Habodin (Hah-Bow-Din): Term meaning to snowboard, not ski, but to snowboard either on a mountain or on ones own property. (from the roots of buck speak)

Friends are great, even better when you have friends that are great at something. This last monday I got to join one of my best friends, Charlie, up in beautiful Breckenridge Colorado once more for some wonderful snowboarding and of course some shootin. Charlie is a creative genius and a talented photographer and videographer, so needless to say after our first day of riding we decided to try our hand at shooting some live action snowboarding and skiing shots on the mountian. Luckily Charlie is one of those guys who knows everybody and someone who everyone loves to be around. This is key especially when you are looking for talent to shoot, and not only shoot but talent you can ask "you wouldnt mind jumping a 40+ kicker over my head while i shoot, just so you can hike 200 yds back up just to do it again?" and then have them more than willing to comply. So CMOS (Charlie) called up a boarder that met us on the slopes and we got rippin...in various meanings of the term. Now unfortunately I wasnt on my "A" game and also forgot to shoot RAW but I did get a few satisfactory shots.

The above is a shot of Charlie's friend (sorry bro I cannot remember your name, hit me up and ill edit this) going off axis right over my head. To get this shot you need 1: a beautiful mountain, 2: a big ass jump! 3: a boarder with sick skillz like you wouldnt believe, and 4: a photographer dumb enough to climb under a 30 foot kicker lip without thinking about it.

I had to throw this shot up, not because it was the sickest trick or the bigges jump, but mainly blind luck with a fortunate outcome. Granted that makes it sound almost like this is an amazing shot, which I admit it's far from, however I just like it and since this IS after all MY blog...why the hell not.

This guy was a real champ, he was totally down with whatever and once more was willing to hike the park over and over. When I thanked him he just shrugged and remarked, "it's my job." Heck where was that in the classified ads when I was lookin!!! But like I said I couldnt have been more greatful.

As I said before I wasnt on my "A" game that day and the biggest regret was shooting in JPG instead of RAW. This is one shot that I really regret not having done in the RAW format due to the excessive noise I got when I processed it in black and white. I shot this one just as Charlie and I were packing up and leaving, I looked up and in between the trees we could see a sole boarder hikin the pipe with a ray of afternoon sun beeming in on him. The feeling was quite epic but I only had time to puch out two frames as we went by, this being the only one in focus due to the cold weather.

We did shoot other riders as we were there, I mean come on when you got literally dozens of pretty much pro riders hittin some of the sickest parks in the world wouldnt you take a few shots?! Any way I just wanted to show these last two pictures (the one above and one below) to illustrate one thing and that is BOTH pro......and amature riders are allowed in the park, and just because you can hit the big jumps without killing yourself doesnt make you pro. That being said I also must say respect the other riders and the slopes. While we were shootin we saw one kid bust his wrist, so note if you are going to go big understand the possible consequences ...that and have fun its a sick sport people.

Anyways that about wraps it up for now... I feel like saying "Join me next time BLA BLA BLA" but since Im fairly certain that Im the only one reading this .... hmmm....

Saturday, December 5, 2009

SO I got a saweet deal on a town home in breck CO for a week, for those of you who dont know breck is a ski resort. Anyway I had a great week and was extremely greatful to be able to finally get away for a little bit and do some riding. It definately gota bit chilly my last two days dropping close to -10 degrees but hey its CO. So I didnt take nearly as many pictures as I was hoping or should have for that matter but I did go out on one of those cold nights to lake Dillon and took a few shots.

The above is a shot of some peak I cant remember the name of but its near lake Dillon heading west. this is about a two minute exposre and I color corrected the shot so that its a dang near perfect representation of what my naked eye saw that night (obviously I didnt see that text floating above the peak but I thought it looked cool ). The only thing I dont really like about this shot is that the shore line is leading the eye out of the image on the lower left hand side but oh well it was freezing, late, and Im on vacation so .... yeah still no excuse.

The shot above is the same peak as the previous one just a bit further down the shore line. The ghostly visor is my friend micah, needless to say he was FREEZING, but a good sport for hanging with me in the cold, also a great border we had a blast tearing it up this week !!! This shot was taken with a bare handheld 430ex camera left at full power first curtain and a two min exposure, I did a little CC in post as well as a bit of burning, the text floating in the air however is completly original and we were very fortunate to have his name floating above the lake that night.

The above is same location as the previous one (same big rock that micah is leaning up against) just a different angle. The mountains in the back is where the ski resort is and also where my amazing town home was located for my weeks stay, once again AMAZING DEAL! I did some CC work in post and decided to punch up the levels a bit for this one as well as the saturation. Two min exposure nothing special.

All in all I gota say that Colorado has got to be one of the most beautiful places on earth and I am greatful to be blessed by living here.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Well I haven't updated this thing in quite sometime so I thought I would post a few pics from the last wedding I shot. The location for this wedding was the Notre Dame catholic church up in Denver. I got there early to find that the church was actually part of a catholic school which I thought was sorta neat but left very little to work with as far as exterior shots. When I got inside I found that the sanctuary, even when fully lit, was still extremely dark. As far as lighting this was pretty interesting, during the ceremony the best I could do other than simply blasting the happy couple with direct on camera flash was to bounce it off the dark wood ceiling...hmm...anyway. Here are a few of the shots from the wedding.

This is a shot of the bride just minutes before the ceremony was about to take place. Since there were no windows .... really anywhere in the building where the ceremony was taking place I took the bride up to the loft where there was window into the atrium. Luckily there was a skylight in the atrium thus creading a nice soft light source for our lovely bride.

A portrait of the lovely couple as the groom kissed his bride to be on the forehead. for the strobist out there this was lit with a 430ex with a shoot through umbrella camera left.

As mentioned before the wedding took place at the Notre Dame catholic church in Denver. There were pretty much two decent locations for exterior shots of the party, a small bench and this large oak tree. When I first arrived the grass was covered with beautiful leaves that had freshly fallen from the tree above, I was so excited to use them in the shots. By the time the party had gotten there and I was taking them to the tree, the maintanence crew had raked up all the leaves...my fault for not telling them not to clean up the leaves but still a bummer.

The brides dress was, as always, beautiful. As I am a fan of hands as the subject of pictures, I liked this shot as the groom was holding his bride. Somehow making this a high key shot just seemed right, the shadows of the dress showed nice subtle details as the heavier shadows of the hands draw focus to the physical guesture taking place.

Above are two shots from reception. The top photo is obviously the bride just before she released her bouquet in the toss. The second photo is just after the broom released the guarder belt, its sorta hard to see but if you follow his pointing finger just a bit to the upper left you can see the flung belt in mid flight.

As always weddings are fun and sometimes challenging, all in all I would say it was a great day and wish the best of luck to the happy couple, congratulations once again you guys im sure you both will lead a long happy life together.

Monday, August 10, 2009

How can you guarantee a good picture, that's easy, just put a soft cute and cuddly kid in front of your lens!

It is my future nephews' first birthday here soon and his mom asked me if I could try taking some photos of him for his invitations. My first response to this question was probably the same as anyone else, "why do you need invitations for a one year old's birthday, and who comes to those?" All this aside, I told her Id give it a shot.

So its a baby shoot!!! that never sounds well whenever I say that in public...I suggest that you never put that way if you are taking pictures of an infant... doesn't seem to fly well, wonder why. Anyway back to the point, first birthday baby shoot, got it. This was actually a fun shoot for me for two reasons first of all this kid has a personality like none other, he is going to make alot of friends and probably break alot of hearts when he gets older, just a happy kid in general. Second, he was the first baby I had ever shot before, I took pictures of him a few months after he was born and even then he had a loveable personality.

The picture above is one of the shots from our first photo session. Setup: a white satin bedsheet from my own laudry baskit for a backdrop, a canon 430exII triggered by an ebay trigger, a white satin pillow case yet another piece of technical equipment absconded from my hamper, and various stuffed animals used as not only props but...props to support the baby from underneath the bedsheet backdrop (if you just read that last sentence and said "wow, runon", congrats surelock Im not an english major and this is a blog yay :). Either way, cute kid makes some nice photos on his own.

This first shoot was done mainly on my request for practice, and I think it helped...if anything it was fun and I didnt get peed on in the process. This second shoot was as previously stated for his birthday invitations. Same process this time, we put the cute kiddo infront of my lens and just let him be, like I said this kid makes pretty good photos on his own. The following are a few shots taken for the invitations.We got a set of wooden prop numbers from a fellow photographer here in the springs (colorado springs) which I found on craigslist.com. Thought the balloons added a nice touch to kinda give a birthday sorta feel. anyway this shot was done by putting baby in front of camera and WHOOOLAA, also had a backdrop stand with a 10x13 white seemless background, a 2x3ft softbox with a canon 430exII for main and a 530ex bounced off the ceiling to fill the background, and an open window camera right for some fill.The above photo was done with the same setup, except this time we gave him a cheereo ... cereal to cheer him up abit. The concept on this one was obiously that the baby is one since he is replacing the ones place in line... I thought it was cute at least. If anyone is confused about it, baby is also wearing a shirt proclaiming " I'M 1" on it which was wonderfully made by none other than his mother.

This kiddo is the funnest thing to shoot...and Im not much for a child photog, but with his huge smile and fun personality this kid is hard to not love, not to mention he is the biggest ham, he actually knows what the camera is and will definately play to it.

After we were done I threw on my 50mm lens and took a few snapshots of my own bundle of perfection. Not designed for a setup or pro shoot look, just wanted to take pictures of my wonderful little girl.I have the strange feeling that she will be equally attracted to the camera...or at least I hope so. She is SOOOO ADORABLE!!!! Lighting for this one was simply the window that was used as fill in the previous shots, and whatever ambiant light my 1.8 AV could muster. Granted these shots arent perfectly lit or even in the best of focus, but the previously mention rule comes into play...childs play. Put a soft cute cuddly kiddo infront of your lens and WHOOOLAA!

Friday, August 7, 2009

DEEEE JAY!!! in da house.... or closet studio as the case may be...is...

I haven't posted in awhile but that's ok I guess till people start reading this haha.few weeks ago a few good friends of mine where DJing a party down at the loft in old colorado city. I had a blast doing their promo shoots and covering the party in person at the loft.

Here is the Promo Shot of DJ's David and Charlie!!!!!

Chalrie and Dave @ The Loft

This was a fun shoot and we got a plenty of cool stuff, unfortunately I cannot say this idea was fully mine. Charlie grabbed one of my spare bulbs that was in my studio and just held it over David's head at first, than in true Charlie and David form they worked out the pose naturally. There is some post work done to make the bulb lit and blue other than that this is mostly raw. Got one background strobe gelled red with a 2x3ft soft box camera left and two bad ass mixers in front of the lens doing there thing = SaWeeT shot!

These guys are alot of fun to work with and are extremely talented mixing in all sorts of styles and blending them effortlessly together to create some sick jams that just make ya move like non other.

Here we got Charlie or "DJ Flacko" in one of his solo shots

DJ "Flacko" Charlie B.

Gota admit CMOS (flacko) is a natural both in front of the camera as well as behind it, this guy has so much talented crammed into his body its no wonder he has to be about 6'6". One of the best mixers ive heard and a great guy to boot. Keep an eye out for this one he is gonna do some big things!This was shot with one strobe gelled red on the background, one strobe gelled blue as a slight rim camera right, and a 2x3ft softbox camera left for the main.

Here's one of DJ David's solo shots from our shoot

DJ David S.

And to keep all of flacko's electro in check we got DJ David!!!! along with charlie this guy is one of the coolest around and has a ton to offer.This was shot with one strobe shot through some bar glasses onto the background and the spill created a nice accent light on the lower left side, one strobe directly behind David's head for a small rim affect, and of course a 2x3ft softbox camera left for main -or- as you can see it acts as a catch in the glasses. I would have like to shoot it without the reflection of the box in the glasses however we were limited with equipment and space as always. Still we liked the shot.

The following are some random shots from the actual party at The Loft in old colorado city.

All of these shots where done by dragging shutter and popping a strobe on our dj's, as you can see the strobe laying on the table in the first shot. While the sutter was open the camera was panned in some shots to create more energy in the image to help simulate the energy of the party. This is a fun technique that helps a photographer convery the sensation of motion in a still shot.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Ok so my life always feels like its moving in fast forward, if I dont have to work at changs Im working on homework, if im not at home im in class, if im not in class im trying to get business going, and if i get a free minute i go see my beautiful girlfriend. It is actually because of that last one that i finally got a chance to shoot today. My spummer class ended early so i decided to wait around to visit my Bella on her lunch break, so to pass the short time i had, i decided to head to GOTG. It was the first day of pure summer sunshine i have seen yet, so how could i resist pullin out the cam to take some of it home with me. When i started shooting i realized my battery was low, which is usually never a problem since im fairly good at keeping a spare. After about 6 frames my battery died and i proceeded to switch out to my backup only to find that it was dead to...chalk one up for preperation. Anyway the day was still gorgeous.

The above is a photo of Pikes Peak from the valley behind the faces of the Kamels, or Camels ...whatever. Either way it was the most green i had seen in months. Due to all the adverse weather the past few days the peak had a fresh layer of brilliant white snow to pull the mountain top out of the beautiful blue sky...yeah i know, no poet.

This one is a shot of the front face of GOTG, for some reason this angle is not nearly as popular as the shot most taken from the backside, of course after all who doesnt like a good backside haha...oh come on, I know that got some sort of reaction...even possibly a bad one which is ok i guess.

The Gardens has so many beautiful locations to be shot, but unfortunately so much of the park has become fenced off or posted no passing. I miss the days when every sunday as a kid i would go climb up various rock faces and formations at will and rome about the park as though it were my backyard...which i guess it was. Now the beauty of the park is being imposed upon by concrete sidewalks winding through the popular areas of the park and fences upon fences with no tresspassing signs warning any who oppose them. 500 clams, thats the cost nowadays if one wants to wander and let venture off into the bueaty of Gods creation. Someday i would love the chance to photograph the park which was such a wonderful place to play as a child from any and every angle i want, a chance to bring my camera places where now no one else can go. Oh well.